In honour of this unlikely milestone, we present a list of things the Rolling Stones musician is older than.

Keith Richards turns 70 on Wednesday, a full 40 years after U.K. music journal New Musical Express infamously placed the Rolling Stones’ most fabled waste case atop a list of rock stars “most likely to die” in 1973 and . . . well . . . a good number of years along from the most optimistic dead-pool predictions of pretty much every other oddsmaker on the planet, amateur or otherwise, too.

It’s got to be a weird state of being, passing through the gates of septuagenarianism as a chap whom everyone (first) gave up for dead circa Exile on Main St., who for the better part of a lifetime proudly — as last Junehe told Men’s Journal last June — “looked upon the body as a laboratory” as long as that body could bear it and who still turns up for most public appearances smoking cigarettes and sipping on a cup of something that most likely isn’t herbal tea. Weird but good, I bet, and no doubt immensely satisfying.

Long may you run, Keith Richards. You truly are the defiant anti-embodiment of rock ’n’ roll’s “live fast, die young” ideal.

Anyway, as the Dartford, U.K.-born Richards celebrates 70 years on this planet in the company of friends, family and perhaps the “assembly of dogs” lovingly mentioned in his 2010 autobiography, Life — if not in the company of bandmate and longtime songwriting foil Mick Jagger, whose own 70th birthday party Richards reportedly skipped this past July — he can take comfort in the knowledge that lifelong chemical enthusiasts of his ilk routinely live it out well past their expected expiration dates.

True, Lou Reed left this world at 71 in October, but Timothy Leary was 75 when he passed, William S. Burroughs made it to an unlikely 83 and Albert Hofmann — who inadvertently discovered the psychedelic properties of LSD in April of 1943, scant months before Richards’ birth on Dec. 18 of the same year — lived to a whopping 102 years of age.

Richards’ only major public health crisis of recent memory came in 2006, when he required brain surgery after falling out of a tree (“Some gnarled low tree that was basically a horizontal branch,” as he downplayed it in Life) while on vacation in Fiji. That experience, he told Men’s Journal, convinced him to give up cocaine. Dude’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

“‘Keith Richards’ — everybody knows what it means. It comes with longevity,” said Keef in that same interview. “I’m glad it strikes people’s imaginations! I’d like to be old Keith and play him to the hilt. I’m probably something different to millions of different people. . .

“If I had a secret, I’d bottle it maybe. I just happen to be here. Just string it, and play it low.”

Keith Richards is 70. Who woulda thunk it? In honour of this milestone, we present a selective list of things that Keith Richards — born in 1943, five years after the ballpoint pen but in the same year that Richard James invented the Slinky and James Wright invented Silly Putty — is older than:

The atomic bomb, first detonated on July 16, 1945.

The microwave oven, patented by Raytheon on Oct. 8, 1945.

The transistor, which permitted us all to listen to the Rolling Stones on devices that weren’t gigantic, was invented in December of 1947.

The Frisbee, first mass-produced as the plastic disc we know and love today in 1948, albeit then named the “Flyin-Saucer,” according to Wikipedia, to capitalize on the UFO hysteria of the day. The “Frisbee” brand would come in 1957.

Velcro, invented by George de Mestral in 1948 and patented by name in 1955.

Mr. Potato Head, first put up for sale by Hasbro in 1952.

The integrated circuit, i.e. the microchip, is patented in February of 1959.

Barbie, first unveiled by Mattel in 1959.

The birth-control pill, first approved for use in the U.S. in 1960, no doubt to the delight of the young Rolling Stones.

The Discman, first rolled out in gigantic form by Sony in November of 1984.

Prozac, first approved for sale in 1987.

The World Wide Web, proposed in 1989 by British engineer Tim Berners-Lee and made available to people who weren’t particle-physics researchers at CERN by 1991.

Napster, the end of the music industry as we know it, launched in 1999.

The iPod, released in October of 2001.

If you feel the need to fete Richards’s birthday two days in a row, there’s also an all-star tribute to Exile on Main St. going down at Toronto’s Silver Dollar on Thursday, Dec. 19, stalwartly supported by house band the Generals and featuring such guest performers as Wayne Petti of Cuff the Duke, Jose Contreras of By Divine Right and Pete Carmichael of Green Rays. They’re doing all four sides of the album, back to front.

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